How To Kill Your Boyfriend In 1 Hard Lesson Part 2
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Concluding part of "How To Kill Your Boyfriend", in which it is revealed why messing with the Slayer's sister is a bad, bad plan...
1. Culture Shock

**_Disclaimer_**_: Don't own, etc., etc. Joss Whedon rules supreme and retains pretty much everything. Only written for personal enjoyment and because this plot bunny just wouldn't die, even after some serious staking…_

**_Summary:_**_ Occurs after _**_Brother, Unfortunately Mine_**_. Rating 18 for sexual references. The sibling theme is not entirely played out … _

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 1 – Culture Shock**

It was _Illyria_, god to a god, God-King of the Primordium, Commander of the Host of the Armies of Doom, Walker of Worlds, victor of innumerable brutal battles to obtain, retain and then expand and maintain its empire to an extent unimaginable to lesser beings – which was pretty much everyone else. It was therefore fully awake and alert within a second of sensing the change in air pressure near it. Finding no threat in the apartment ceiling above, it turned its attention to the empty space in the bed next to it, ears tracking the soft pad of its mate's bare feet as he went down the steps from this sleeping nest. In complete silence, Illyria rolled this body to a different position on the bed and watched through the railings as its mate walked to a large wooden cupboard and removed something, a scroll, that he laid on the kitchen table.

Illyria watched incuriously as its mate carefully removed a small section from the scroll and then standing up, went and took down one of the photograph frames on the wall. Instead of images, the trio of frames contained _faux parchment_ decorative scripts – one in a dead tongue called Sanskrit, one of little pictures called Egyptian Hieroglyphs an also extinct language, and one of little squiggles called Classic Greek. Removing this final one from the frame, Illyria's mate crumpled it and tossed it casually into the trashcan, before replacing it with the section it had torn from the scroll and putting the frame back on the wall hook where it hung next to the others, looking as if what was in it was what had always been in it.

Illyria was indifferent, instead watching the pleasing motion of muscles over it's mate's skeleton. Humans had always seemed such a weak species, lacking any sort of offensive horns, spines or defensive armour; most of it's vital organs were crammed in the same small place, making it easy to kill. In theory that was; the species possessed an extraordinary resilience, surviving and recovering from injuries Illyria's own kind would have died from. Their fragile-looking skeleton was in fact more flexible than it appeared, and if given opportunity, would heal from even multiple fractures. Even with all limbs inoperative or most of its body non-functional, a human could still be of use to other members of its species. Like that 'Hawking' human that Wesley admired. Illyria's species would have killed anything with such a useless body, but though that human male's physical body was inoperative, he was revered as one of the greatest scholars of his species, possessing a rather remarkable grasp of the many dimensions, considering humanity's limited intelligence.

Wesley-human sat down at the table and began to write something, tracing the scroll with his finger, but Illyria was not interested. What did interest it was the fact that Wesley had taken the time to don on his briefs before he left their nest…or bed as he called it….even though only he and his mate were present. Illyria found this taboo about 'underwear' very confusing.

In the morning, 'moving into' Wesley's apartment had caused Fred-human to reach such a state of agitation that Illyria had simply taken over the process, transferring Fred human's clothing and other necessities from her lair to Wesley's lair – apartment as he called it – by the time Fred and Wesley-human would customarily leave to go the big palace where they worked with the vampire, Angel.

Illyria had taken careful note of how much pleasure its mate seemed to be experiencing from the fact that Fred-human was now staying in his la- apartment, even though Illyria was not doing mating things to his body, or even touching him. To Illyria's confusion, Wesley-human had seemed uncomfortable as he put away in drawers Fred-human's lan-jher-ay, even though the small scraps of smooth cloth seemed to carry no mystical power. Illyria had gone to the palace with its mate, but when it had gone into Fred-human's 'lab' lair, it had changed it's mind and instead left the building to the places that humans got things they wanted from by giving other humans green paper.

As it examined many examples of this lan-jher-ay, which the humans wrote as _lingerie_ in their funny scratchy language, Illyria became even more uncertain. Humans, at least in this land, were not in the slightest bit bothered by images of other humans that were nude; however, they reacted with startling fury when one of their kind inadvertently displayed these undergarments while wearing them. Humans spent a lot of time writing and talking about these things that were specially designed to cover the human sex organs, though Illyria had initially not been impressed by their flimsy construct and lack of protective armour. They were made of many things – synthetic human materials, plus plant and animal products like cotton and silk. Some were plain while others were decorated with bits of ribbon and lace.

Large parts of the many books Illyria had read in the library when preparing to first claim Wesley-human as its mate had dealt with 'lingerie'; wearing certain kinds of this lingerie could make a female even more desirable to a male. The 'best' kinds of lingerie were those of silk and lace. Eventually Illyria had located a place called _Victoria's Secret, _which specialised in these things, and had gone inside. After trying on many different types of this underwear, Illyria had found that the silky things were actually very comfortable against it's host skin, unlike some of the synthetic fibres that had rubbed. The female humans at the place had been very happy when Illyria had used Wesley's 'kre-dit ka-rd' and bought many of them.

Bringing them back to Wesley's apartment, Illyria had left them there and returned to the big palace, and allowed the Fred human to take over when the _other_ dead-but-living, Spike, had come with the green demon and the warrior human male from Pylea and the young female human. As far as Illyria could ascertain as it allowed its human host to temporarily control the body, the young female was being pursued by a male that wished to mate with her, but she did not wish to mate. However, the male would not accept this, and intended to force the female to mate. Illyria did not quite grasp why the female had not simply killed the male – none of it's own species would ever persist if another did not wish to congress, or it would have been slaughtered. However, apparently female human bodies lacked the physical strength of human male bodies and therefore the female had come to the males to help it killed the errant male that pursued it…

_To be continued in Chapter 2…_

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	2. Cryptic Conundrum

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 2 – Cryptic Conundrum **

"The staking attempt shows that Staavuz knows Spike's a vampire." Wesley had told the humans assembled around the big table as Illyria listened from within its host, after they had heard how Staavuz tried to kill Spike the day before. "I think that even now, he's at the hotel, testing Lorne's Sanctuary spell."

"It won't take him long to find out that the spell only covers just past the hotel's interior proper," Lorne predicted, "so he'll know that the gardens and the parking garage underneath aren't covered."

"He'll attack again in daylight." Gunn said, and everyone nodded agreement.

"My guess is that he'll come at you at midday, in the parking garage under the Hyperion. Use hired muscle to occupy Spike while he gets you into sunlight."

"What's your idea?" Angel asked Illyria's mate.

"Tomorrow morning, me and Gru will take Dawn from the hotel – we have to assume that Staavuz will have a spy loitering outside from tonight. Since we're clearly human and able to pursue in sunlight, its not likely Staavuz will risk attacking. While we're figuratively waving our arms in this corner to keep Staavuz's attention, _you _lot will be sneaking into the Hyperion from over _there_. We three will come back to the Hyperion about mid-morning, which will make Staavuz more confident about his noon-attack idea." Wesley put forward. "Remember, Staavuz has probably tracked Dawn and Spike here, but as far as he knows, this building houses nothing but a bunch of amoral lawyers…"

"…So he's not factored anyone from Wolfram & Hart into the equation," Fred had finished, smiling at her mate.

"Exactly." Wesley admitted. "He'll only be geared up to take on Spike, because Staavuz thinks he's the only real threat. Me and Gru - two humans - he's not worried about. At noon, we all go down to the parking garage in the service elevator," Wesley carried on explaining his plan, "but we all hang back and keep still while Spike goes out first, with Dawn a few yards behind him. Staavuz and company will pop up out of the shadows. He will have ordered his goons to take out our blond deadly nightmare while he grabs Dawn. However, that's when we all make our entrance – Dawn, get back inside the elevator at that point. We clean house before they realise what's going on, and Dawn goes home to Sunnydale in time for tea."

Angel smiled. "Nice one, Wes. Remember – Staavuz is a Gulff-Osok, so he has three vital organs, which are equivalent to human hearts, one in each upper thigh at the front, and one in his head. You have to hit all three to kill him, but his body isn't any denser than human flesh and it doesn't have any protective armouring – you just have to know _where_ to aim."

The meeting had dispersed at that point but Illyria had allowed Fred to retain control until the evening when the two of them returned to Wesley's, or rather 'their' apartment, but the female's instant alarm upon walking into the bathing room a few minutes later and seeing the _Victoria's Secret _purchases had caused Illyria to re-emerge hastily in response to Fred-human's agitation. Removing this body's dress, Illyria had begun to try on the garments, examining the host body in the many long mirrors from all angles, not seeing anything particularly of interest.

The bathroom door had opened and its mate had entered, stopping dead as he saw Illyria. Comparing his reaction to what the books had claimed, Illyria discovered that it was indeed true; the garments had a most gratifying effect on its mate. Carefully watching him, Illyria had tried them on in turn, noting that those in black and a pale blue were his favourite colour. He had been most appreciative of the things called teddies (though this word was also used to refer to small stuffed representations of a large carnivorous mammal quite dangerous to humans), and had also clearly liked the suspender things and stockings as opposed those 'nylons' that one simply pulled up to the waist. Wesley-human had enjoyed slowly removing the garments as they mated in the bathing room, suckling Illyria's nipples through the silk in a most pleasurable way.

Now, Illyria ignored these crumpled scraps of silk on the floor as it rose from the bed; as its mate sat there writing, his posture had become much more tense. Humans communicated mostly not by speech, but by moving their bodies in very subtle ways, however something else that baffled Illyria was that they _ignored_ this communication, giving greater attention to what speech-sounds a human made than how they _really _talked to each other. The increasing rigidity in the way Wesley was sat and the frown on his face that Illyria could see reflected in the glass door of the 'microwave' oven indicated that he was not at ease. The warrior-demon padded down the spiral staircase in absolute silence, heedless of its nudity.

Having disposed of the 'suicide' section in a way that made it instantly accessible yet completely unrecognisable to anyone except another mystical language expert, Wesley began to work on the tiny paragraph that had come back to his mind when Dawn had first arrived on Wolfram & Hart's doorstep, so to speak. It literally consisted of a few lines and was barely the size of a child's palm, squeezed in between a series of large colourful pictograms one side and an extremely complex demon language on the other. However, with the Scroll of Niamh, size was irrelevant, as if the author or authors had simply put everything down on whatever blank area of scroll happened to be in front of them at that point.

Laying down his pen, Wesley looked at the English translation of what he had written, amounting to just six lines with all his scribbling out and re-phrasings:

Defend the child of light, for she shall have no brother, nor of him shall there be another. By this you will know the Harbinger: the Key shall seek the Lock. Her Champion and the Champion shall be unto the Child of Light as a hiding place in a storm, and the Two-Faced One shall illuminate enlightenment to the Mahju, he shall see that the blood will tell.

Wesley grunted in frustration, uttering a potent ancient Scandinavian curse-word under his breath. He would have liked to have tracked down – or had hunted down, given his current position of power - his former Watcher colleague and ex-Wolfram & Hart employee Rutherford Sirk (and how had he survived the Beast's slaughter of Wolfram & Hart's contingent?), who sent Angel and Spike on their phoney quest for the Cup of Perpetual Torment. Mainly to inflict some torment on the guy's person himself, but Wesley would have openly admitted that Eve & Lindsay McDonald's stooge had been one of the few mystical scholars in the world whose skill equalled that of Roger Wyndham-Pryce, almost as good as Wesley himself.

Lorne had revealed how Sirk had reacted so contemptuously to Angel's protestations that he had 'read' the Shanshu Prophecy. Using the illustration of someone reading the 17th Century English King James Version in comparison to reading the bible in it's original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, Sirk had scornfully claimed that unless one went to the original language of any text, all the 'subtlety, nuance and flavour' was lost.

On an intellectual level, Wesley had to agree with the impostor's withering assessment of Angel 'reading' the Shanshu in English. The King James could not often be beaten for lyricism, poetry, and fiery words that stirred the soul, but large parts of it were inaccurately translated, inserting interchangeably words that actually meant different things, such as 'Leviathan', a poetic description of the ancient nation of Egypt in place of 'Dragon', a reference to the fallen Morning star, Satan the Devil. Likewise, the New Testament had originally been written in Greek, a language that had four separate words meaning 'love': agape; eros; philia and storge. Reading the New Testament as it had originally been written in Greek, a person always understood which sort of 'love' – principled compassion; romantic/sexual; platonic friendship or the affection for close family members – was being referred to as soon as they laid eyes on the page, whereas in English, the definition of 'love' had to be deduced from the surrounding context.

Exactly his present problem; Wesley looked again at what he had written down. The small passage had mostly been written in G'shundi, bar certain key words. G'shundi had no plural suffixes, so singular or plural tenses had to be inferred from the surrounding text. The phrase 'child of light' followed immediately by a reference to two different genders indicated that the word 'child' should be translated as 'children'. G'shundi did not use capitals to indicate importance, or to start new sentences, using certain words grouped together to denote importance or rank. Instead of using the word for sunlight, the author indicated the equivalent of capitalising the phrase 'Child Of Light' by using a contracted G'shundi phrase meaning 'bright mystical emanations'.

He had to assume that Dawn was the Key, since she had literally been a mystical Key to open the way between worlds – assigning that role to any other being would just make things too complicated by far. Two different words had been used for Champion, the first in a possessive G'shundi tense indicating that the first Champion was specifically the Champion of the female child of light, whereas the second Champion had been a generic Champion of Light, a warrior for good, which could apply in theory to any being who served the Powers That Be.

Logically, Spike was 'her Champion'. Dawn herself had said that Spike had been her defender against Glory. It was hardly unusual for a person to have, at least for a time, someone who was their specific Champion as well as a different person being Champion of Light in a broader context. Angel had for a certain time period been Buffy's specific Champion; the Groosalug had been Cordelia's specific Champion during her short-lived Sovereignty of Pylea.

Presumably, however, the second generic Champion of Light would refer to Angel, who with Spike would be a protection against the 'storm' of Staavuz attacks, but what about the Lock? Was Dawn supposed to meet someone else here in LA and lead him or her to Angel? Another champion they hadn't found yet?

It certainly followed the established pattern of the Powers That Be. Instead of finding those of his own Circle of Nine as soon as he got to LA, Angel had come across them gradually. Francis Doyle had been first, then Cordelia Chase when Angel met her at a showbiz party. He hadn't got the next member, Wesley, until after Doyle died. Charles Gunn had been next, followed by Lorne who Angel had met through Wesley due to the Englishman being a regular patron of Caritas. After that had come Fred, trapped in Lorne's native dimension; the penultimate addition had been Angel's son, Connor, and now much later, finally Spike. Buffy Summers had experienced the same thing. Her Circle of Nine had consisted originally of Xander, Giles, Willow and Angel. These had been added to first with Cordelia and then Oz and then Faith, but Angel, Cordelia and Oz were out of the picture, at least in Sunnydale, by the time Anya and Tara, the last two of her Circle, had arrived.

If Dawn was the female child of light, who was the male child? The text seemed to indicate he was not the same as the Lock. However, the text also seemed to imply that the children of light had no siblings, which in Dawn's case was obviously not so. Leaving aside that point, Wesley focussed on the one giving him the most trouble. Like 'Key' and 'Lock', 'Two-faced One' was not in G'shundi, being a phrase that was an ancient proto-Greek Ionian word. It was actually a medical phrase, referring in the mildest form to a birth defect where a baby was born with fingers or toes that had not separated into individual digits; the severest example being of course Siamese or so-called 'conjoined' twins. However, in the vernacular Ionian, the phrase was a cooking term describing the mixing together of two dissimilar ingredients to produce a foodstuff that was nevertheless edible. It had also been an insulting slang term used to refer to people with an obvious physical handicap.

None of which were very helpful, considering that this being would do or say something that would lead to Wesley – the Mahju – to figuring something important out. The final two words, 'will tell', were again not G'Shundi, carrying the connotation of imparting knowledge or providing information. The blood will tell the Mahju…something. What?

Wesley went back to the first lines. Staavuz and his little temper tantrum were part of the Harbinger to clue Wesley in. It was because of him that Dawn had come to LA to find Spike. However, though he was making a lot of noise and being a 'storm', he wasn't the main event, in the same way that the Beast and his fun raining fire and blotting out the sun had been pretty nasty but nothing in comparison to what came after…Angel's deadly granddaughter, Jasmine. This whole Staavuz circus was solely to flag up to Wesley: something important is about to be revealed, so pay attention.

Then there were the children of light…no brother, or another. Wesley brightened as a thought struck him – the female child of light would have no brother. Not that the female child of light would have no siblings, but specifically no male sibling, which did not preclude the existence of…a sister. Buffy and Dawn would certainly not have a brother from their parents, because Joyce was dead. Hank Summers might at some point sire a son on his current partner/former secretary, but the boy would not be Joyce's son. So…?

He nearly jumped as he became aware of something next to him and looked up to see Fred standing naked right beside him in eerie silence. Then Wesley became aware of her blue skin…Illyria.

The warrior demon looked without interest at its mate's writings. It was not best pleased, as the room was rather chilly when this body was unclad. "Daylight is for being a scholar, in the palace of Angel's Kingdom." Illyria instructed its mate firmly. "Night-time is for sleeping in our lair."

"And mating," Wesley murmured wryly, recognising the intent in the warrior-demon's expression.

"Any time can be used for mating." Illyria pointed out. "This body is cold now. You will pleasure my Hraku with your mouth in the way that Fred-human likes, in order to warm it. You will not leave our nest during the time of sleeping." Illyria instructed.

"I did not mean for you to get cold." Wesley placated as he casually rolled up the scroll and placed it and the writing pad away from Illyria's eyes, before gently taking Fred's elbow to lead her body back to bed. "But this that I do is very important to me. Sometimes I will need to look at it, but I do it during the sleep-time because I do not wish to disturb you. If you stay in our ne- bed until I return, you will not be cold and you can carry on sleeping."

Illyria allowed its mate to take it back to the bed. "It is good to sleep next to my mate," Illyria said reluctantly, recognising the determination in its mate's tone of voice, "you are very warm and have a pleasing smell when you are next to me, especially when we have mated."

"I will not do it often." Promised Wesley, his voice dropping into a lower octave when Illyria mentioned mating. Settling Illyria's host body into the bed, he knelt between its knees as it reclined. Lowering his head to the juncture of this body's thighs, he murmured, "I apologise for letting you get cold…"

_To be continued in Chapter 3…_

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	3. The Slayer Cometh

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 3 – The Slayer Cometh**

Buffy handled the People Carrier with a deft ease as they headed south to Los Angeles. Next to her sat Giles, the epitome of cool British savoir-faire. In back, Xander, Willow, Kennedy, Faith and Robin Wood sat in the seats and stayed quiet. Giving Buffy the driving job enabled her to utilise her energy for something constructive, but the others had no such outlet.

Of them all, Robin Wood recognised that he was the most rational – or at least, 'emotionally stable' - of the group, part of the reason that he had privately decided to come along within moments of the unhappy revelations of Spike's non-death and Dawn's duplicity. Of course, he knew about 'The Vampire With The Soul', or rather the original one, Angel, but only in a purely academic way, such as a devoted sports fan might know the entire history of his favourite baseball player, but never have ever actually met them. Though Faith sat next to him, her closed-off face and distant eyes showed she was miles away. Robin wasn't upset or offended, he had gone into this relationship with his eyes wide-open – through no failing of her own, Faith had been deprived of the happy childhood Buffy had enjoyed, and she wasn't called the Dark Slayer because she was a brunette. Much as he loved her, Robin knew that Xander's wry description of Faith as, 'murderer, sociopath, champion' was more accurate than not.

Robin's lips tightened as he remembered everything that he had read up on about Liam/Angelus/Angel, and wondered if there might be some sort of bitter irony in the fact that while Angelus had made many other vampires, like his Sire Darla, daughter Drusilla, grandson Spike and even such as the Master, look like cuddly teddy bears in comparison to his acts of torture and brutality, yet Angelus had never fought or killed a Slayer. The fact that Spike had Sired and then been forced to kill his own mother when she attempted to have sex with him put an enlightening slant on the peroxide vampire's personality but he had killed Robin's mother…the ex-Principal's eyes darkened from milk chocolate to nearly coal black as he unwillingly remembered the definitely tense conversation he had had with Buffy on the subject of Spike, once it became clear that Spike was her ex-lover, just days after he and Rupert Giles had been exposed as colluding in their abortive attempt to kill the blond vampire - for Buffy's own good.

Spike had claimed that all Slayers were 'just a little bit in love with death'… "'…and he's right.'" The blonde Slayer had looked at Robin, her eyes unflinching as he bristled over what he perceived as a slur on his mother, "The Shadowmen's oh-so-glorious legacy was a long line of girl-children whose only freedom from constant fear and terrible pain and unending loneliness and violent battle was death. All Slayers subconsciously have a death-wish." Buffy had looked away from his angry eyes then, her own looking into some middle distance, "Spike has a rare gift – perfect clarity. It's just like he told me: No Slayer has ever been **defeated** in battle, pet, it just came eventually to the fight where they **yielded**. There's a difference.'"

So there would be Spike, his mother's murderer to deal with, and then the legendary Angel…how could you adequately prepare yourself to make small talk with a 'reformed serial killer'? Then there was all Angel's 'baggage' another of Buffy's ex-lovers and redemption seeking Champion of Light. Plus the 'assorted others' who formed 'Team Angel', namely Angel's personal Scooby Gang in the way that Giles and company did for Buffy.

Team Angel founder member Francis Doyle had been a half-Brachen demon, now long dead. Ex-cheerleader, Sunnydale High alumnus and Bitch Queen Cordelia Chase was now also dead, another casualty in the eternal war, like the witch Tara Maclay, Willow's former partner; Robin had never met any of the three. Then there was Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, another ex-Watcher; Robin tried to reconcile the Scooby Gang's reminiscences of him as a sort of next-generation-Giles-come-ultimate-nerd with Faith's succinct but telling advice to view him as her evil twin brother on a bad drug trip. Robin found the idea of such a transformation plausible – it was their job to walk into the fire, and those that came through the other side would always suffer burns too deep to really heal.

Charles Gunn sounded like a savvy street-tough but was Angel's legal eagle, though still the most normal sounding of the group. There was also an empathic demon, Lorne, bright-green-with-red-eyes-and-horns no less, and Winifred Burkle, super-genius physicist who might not be around much if her injuries had been as severe as Andrew implied. Robin, however, found some comfort in the fact that Angel's little gang of homicidal maniacs did refer to themselves as 'Team Angel' with the same dryly ironic attitude as Buffy's little gang of homicidal maniacs called themselves the Scooby Gang. It strongly hinted at a group of people not cursed by rampant egomania, with the always-refreshing ability to get over themselves.

The exit sign flashed past and he sat slightly straighter in anticipation, a small smile curving his handsomely formed mouth: Celebrity Deathmatch…Scooby Gang versus Team Angel…

_To be continued in Chapter 4_

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	4. Epiphany

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 4 – Epiphany**

"You want I should do back flips down the pier?" Dawn asked eagerly. "I've been working out to make myself really nubile."

"No." Wesley rejoined succinctly, his eyes constantly scanning the area just in case, though he firmly believed Staavuz wouldn't attack until the demon thought he had the advantage; the collapsible sword strapped to his arm was reassuringly cool against his skin and his gun was so comfortable in the holster it was easy to almost forget he was wearing it…almost.

"I'm only kidding. I just wanted to see that wince you made when I said 'nubile'. You look exactly like Giles, sort of all dyspeptic, like you've just wolfed down something Tex-Mex with extra jalapenos and then remembered you've got a stomach ulcer." Dawn confessed cheerily.

'Exactly like Giles'; Wesley suppressed a smile as he tried to give Dawn a quelling look that slid right off the exuberant girl's hide as she went towards yet another candy stall. He had no doubt many would snigger at him still having a slight case of hero-worship when he was heading dangerously close to forty, but there were worse examples of the Watcher breed to choose as a role model. Rutherford Sirk, Quentin Travers – and Roger Wyndham-Pryce – all sprang instantly to mind, for instance.

Dawn grinned at having made Wesley go 'all British', and turned her attention to the vital matter of sugary goodness. Let's see, what shall it be…

"Hi."

Jerking her head up, Dawn was aware of the amped up wattage of her smile as she looked into a familiar pair of eyes. "Connor!"

"I saw you come down here, thought I recognised you…" Connor held his smile, even as he examined her more closely and kept a watchful eye on the two rapidly approaching men, 'Gru', and a dark-haired stranger that something told Connor was the more dangerous one of the pair. The dark-haired stranger looked at him and checked his forward motion, his face paling. Connor stared back uneasily as the stranger's grey eyes seemed to search his face as if desperately looking for something, before becoming impassive but not before Connor glimpsed a curious mixture of resignation, regret, anger and…love? …pass in fleeting sequence over the man's face.

"Wes…" Dawn shot the stranger an unsubtle command with her eyes.

"Is this…?"…another step-brother? Connor swallowed the sarcastic remainder of the question. He doubted very much whether 'Spike' was Dawn's step-anything. Who is Bad Tan? How come you're living in a massive abandoned hotel with the reincarnation of Sid Vicious, Conan the Barbarian's younger brother and a guy who's green? Instead of acting like a normal thug, why did Bad Tan go all Van Helsing on your step-brother-my-ass Spike? How were you able to do that Star Trek invisible force field thing? And why do you seem completely unfazed by the fact that you're living in the middle of this bizarre LSD trip gone wrong?

"This is Wesley." Dawn introduced, and despite his suspicion, Connor had to hide a smile at the obvious please-like-him glance she gave grey-eyes.

Wesley gave him an enigmatic look, his features briefly showing a sort of arrested realisation, as if he just figured out the solution to a problem that had been perplexing him, before smiling and saying, "Hello, Connor," in an accent that instantly revealed himself to be English, like Spike.

"Do you want an ice-cream with me?" Connor asked the question generally of Dawn and Wesley since 'Gru', a few feet away, remained looking around him in a deceptively casual stance that nevertheless reminded Connor of a bodyguard – like the President's Secret Service men.

A bodyguard expecting trouble, at that; with a knowing smile, Wesley declined as Dawn accepted. Going to the stall, Connor hid his own knowing smile as he knew his acute hearing would not fail him at this distance, though he knew he blushed a fiery red as he listened in to Dawn and the Englishman.

"He's so cute!" Dawn enthused.

"I'll take your word for it." Wesley's tone of voice made his attitude hard to determine.

"I met him at the Rosita Museum. He likes hanging out there." Dawn lobbied Wesley. "Come on," She wheedled, "what do you think?"

"I think…that you two were made for each other."

Despite ostensibly being out of hearing range, Connor couldn't help the betraying way he jerked his head around to look at Wesley, unable to decipher the undercurrents in the Englishman's almost-sardonic assessment. Fortunately Wesley was concentrating on Dawn, visibly wincing as she emitted an excited squeal and hugged him before stepping back and cheekily apologising for 'inflicting emotional mushiness' on his English self.

Bringing back the ice cream, Connor and Dawn began to chat. Dawn revealed she was at UC Sunnydale from the fall, while he was at Stanford, and they started talking about college, but through it all, Connor was acutely aware of the fact that though they tried to disguise it, and though it was clearly not apparent to anyone else, the two nearby men were bodyguards, not chaperones. Finally, Wesley cleared his throat and moved closer, telling Dawn that it was ten past eleven and that they had to be 'back for twelve'. Dawn, treating Wesley's words with a gravitas they seemingly far from warranted, said her goodbyes immediately and with none of that adolescent whiny go-away-can't-you-see-I'm-talking-to-the-cute-guy-here attitude Connor had half-expected her to cop with the Englishman.

Connor watched the three walk away, Dawn in the middle, her slim legs and neat buttocks really hot in those pants, with Gru on her left and Wesley on her right; they're both killers, Connor recognised, but they'll die for her, as well as kill for her. By the time he began to make his own way back down the pier Connor knew with absolute certainty that he would be transferring to UC Sunnydale as soon as he could. Looking in the direction Dawn and her two guardians had gone, though he could no longer see them, Connor suddenly recalled a tenth grade school trip his Sociology teacher had taken the class on, to one of the city's homeless shelters. It had made Connor and his classmates realise that they co-existed side-by-side with a whole world – a genuine parallel reality - that they knew nothing about. I've just seen it again, Connor thought as he wended his way through the day-trippers; Dawn, Spike, Wesley, Gru – and whoever else she's got like that green guy. They walk right beside us, and they live among us, but they live – and die – in a whole different world that we know nothing about.

_To be continued in Chapter 5..._

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	5. High Noon

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 5 – High Noon**

Staavuz bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as he heard the elevator start to come down, hissing softly in warning to his hirelings of the hour who hugged the shadows tighter.

Staavuz had no idea what the blond vampire's gig was all about. Recognising what the homage to Punk was at the Rosita Musuem, Staavuz had initially stood back to let the undead eat the stupid little cow preparatory to swooping in and claiming credit himself, until finally it impinged that the blond vampire was protecting the girl…from him.

Staavuz had to admit it had given him pause; after all, what kind of pull could a skinny human child like her have to get a vampire to go all Kevin Costner to her Whitney Houston? Maybe it was something to do with those Wolfram & Hart types but Staavuz couldn't see it. Vampires were certainly amongst the brightest of the Evil types, though that came more from the human hosts inhabited by the demons, but their Great Flaw was hunger, they became notoriously distracted and therefore unreliable when it came to the ruby red. For Wolfram & Hart to hand the job of protecting a tender, nubile young hottie like Dawn to a vampire was the famous proverbial fox being put in charge of guarding the hen house. Perhaps the vampire's game plan was to sucker the little slut with a 'hero' act – kill the nasty demon, Dawn falls into his cold embrace, opening her heart and her legs, unaware that the vampire would drain her dry even as he f-

Staavuz hissed in warning as one of the demons moved restlessly in tune to the louder rumbling of the rapidly approaching elevator. Acquiring 'muscle' at short notice was always a tricky proposition, and Staavuz cast his mind back to his actions after his abortive attempt to stake Spike proved that the hotel had a major sanctuary spell on it – he still suspected his roundup of hired thugs had been too fast…

* *

Staavuz blessed his species' lack of acute olfactory senses as he entered the seventh bar of his search. He was after hired thugs, heavy-duty muscle to keep the blond vampire busy while he grabbed his little prize and hauled her out into the sunlight where he could snap her neck like a twig in full view of the powerless vampire. Claiming to have been paid ten thousand dollars, a mere fraction of the two million he had been advanced from his four million dollar payday when little Dawnie was deader than a can of Spam, Staavuz was aiming for a definite stratum of demon underworld society. He didn't want those so far down the IQ ladder that you had to keep reminding them to breathe every other minute, they were far more trouble than they were worth. On the other hand, he didn't want anything intelligent enough to actually think for itself for exactly the same reason.

Carefully scoping the place out, Staavuz made overtures to three individuals, and by the time that he got back to the Hyperion with his goon squad in tow in time to see the Viper leave from the underground garage the following day, he had no less than eleven very strong but not very bright vicious-looking demons grouped around him.

"If they gotta Sanctuary spell, why we here?" One of the group had asked vacantly as Staavuz led his little reconnoitring posse across and up the main path of the old building. The guy was all teeth and bony facial protrusions, his features contorting even more hideously as he struggled to get his brains working in tandem…a common problem with bi-cerebral species.

"To find out just how far that blond bastard's mojo goes." Staavuz growled. "If making your world a nice safe little bubble with a Sanctuary spell was that easy, everyone would be doing it. They're complicated, require a lot of power and tend to go wrong, very easily…"

Within ten minutes, Staavuz had his little coterie of hell-fiends in the hotel's vast, deserted underground parking garage, and was laying out their instructions, which, simply, were to attack the blond vampire on sight.

"What'll you be doing?" Another of the group asked, a bipedal species with crocodile like skin, tusks and an unpleasant mixture of suspicion and more intelligence than Staavuz wanted in his voice.

"I'll take care of the girl." Staavuz said, his tone making it clear that this point was non-negotiable.

Staavuz went on, pointing out optimum positions for them to make their rush on the vampire at noon the next day, keeping a weather eye on that same one who looked increasingly unhappy, obviously brainier than his fellows. While a lot of other-dimensional creatures talked down vampires as inferior or half-breeds, they didn't do so in the presence of the undead, because an angry vampire was in truth one of the most vicious, brutal, relentless stone-cold-killers in this or any other reality.

"How can you be sure that Sanctuary whammy doesn't cover the vamp down here?" Unfortunately Bright challenged looking around the garage unhappily. "While you're canoodling with the human spawn, he could be kicking our asses."

"Good point." Staavuz acknowledged, shooting the demon in one eye without taking the gun from inside his suit pocket. Two others moved aside as the corpse toppled over backwards. "Guess we can pretty much guarantee the sanctuary spell doesn't extend down this far."

* *

Staavuz tensed as a familiar lithe figure exited the elevator and headed straight for him, or rather towards the Viper parked slightly to the left of his position. Those bleached follicles were better than a flaming beacon. A good three to four feet behind him, looking distinctly unhappy, came the human kid.

In unison, the demons surged forward with grunts and growls, making Dawn stop dead, her eyes widening. Smirking, Staavuz moved left, intent on working his way around the edges to snatch her as they closed in on the outnumbered blond vampire.

"Staavuz, Staavuz," chided a cultured voice from behind Spike and Dawn. The human man with the cold grey eyes looked at the encircling monstrosities with contemptuous amusement. "You're so tediously predictable. Takes all the fun out of it, you know."

Unnerved by the use of his real name rather than his human disguise, Staavuz bared his teeth at the human, who looked amused rather than frightened. Dawn, a smug smirk on her fat human lips, was backing away rapidly towards the elevator she had just exited. Staavuz gave a warning snarl at his minions. If the man wanted to commit suicide, so be it –

"Yeah, Staavuz," a tall brown-haired ma- vampire, dressed just like the blond vampire all in black, glided to stand next to the human, "where's your pride in your plotting?"

"GET them!" Barked Staavuz, finally seeing the set up even as he reeled in shock from recognising the infamous Vampire With the Soul, Angel, and gambling that his minions were stupid enough to automatically obey his yell instead of realising they were cannon fodder.

The two groups rushed together; what the demons lacked in speed of movement and razor-sharp reflexes they made up for in raw power. They swung wild haymakers and missed, but their advantage was that they only needed to connect once. Moving in a perfect complementing choreography as if they had practised such a routine daily for years, Angel and Spike met the brunt of the demons charge, and were like willo'-the-wisps. Dancing, ducking, spinning and kicking, they were ephemeral phantoms as the goons tried to land blows, but every action they made found its mark in the snapping of a horn here, the crushing of a bone there.

To the left was Charles Gunn, incongruous in a suit as sharp as the huge double-headed axe he twirled like it was a cheerleader's baton, a steadily growing pile of appendages and limbs around him showing his efficacy with the weapon. Gru's sword sliced and slashed as he gleefully did what he did best, while Lorne hefted Wesley's favourite pump-action shotgun and made short shrift of anything that tried to sneak behind the fighters. By his side, Illyria's skin glowed the hue of a cerulean summer sky as the protective armour of its original species managed to successfully transform its host's softer female skin. With a single arm swipe, Illyria tore the head off an attacker, and looked towards its mate.

Wesley raised the rifle and aimed with precision, over the fighters' heads. Staavuz shrieked in rage and pain as agony seared through his left leg; he fell forward flat, which made Wesley miss his shot at the creature's head. Before Wesley could correct his aim, a bellowing to his right telegraphed the attack of one of the demons who had managed to get past Angel and Spike in the melee, and who didn't realise Wesley wasn't as much of a threat to it as the others. He jumped back, the protruding spines from the thing's fist missing disembowelling him by millimetres as it overshot.

A blue barrier was suddenly between him and his attacker. Illyria ducked under the next clumsy blow and blocked the follow-through swing with one upraised arm, the demon howled as its spines shattered against the strange blue-armoured skin; like many of the more 'modern' demon-species it was a flickering candle in comparison to a flaming torch when faced with an original, prehistoric demon kind, just like modern vampires were versus a Turok-Han. Illyria ripped one of its arms off, making it shriek hideously and stumble back. In the foreground Spike bent forward at the waist and Angel rolled over his back to land the other side of his grandson and block the attack of two more; Gunn lunged forward to support Gru, who was fighting off two more, while Lorne blasted the head clean off one who was charging straight at the elevator where Dawn watched, her fingers firmly on the DOOR HOLD button in violation of Wesley's instructions to shut the door and go back up to the lobby.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, it all over: the group stood victorious amidst the mangled remains of the ten attackers, completely unscathed with the exception of their clothing, most of which bore a variety of exotic spatter stains.

"Damn." Wesley's tone was redolent with self-disgust. In the far corner of the parking garage, there was no sign of Staavuz, the clear trail of a strange, viscous rust-yellow liquid showing where the badly injured demon had made his getaway. "I only got him in one leg."

"It's enough." Angel straightened up. "Staavuz is a bully-boy counting on the fact that Dawn had no muscle on her team. I doubt he'll be back now he's had his ass kicked into next Tuesday."

Since Wesley could make no demur without alerting the listening Dawn, the Englishman merely nodded, but his eyes remained troubled as he looked at the splashes of coagulating rusty liquid.

_To be continued in Chapter 6…_

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	6. Showdown

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 6 - Showdown**

The staff complement of Wolfram & Hart were an extraordinarily stoic bunch; flying saucers landing on the White House lawns might raise the odd eyebrow or two, but then again would just as likely not. Over and above this, however, they were simply accustomed to their vampire CEO walking through the doors looking like he'd just fought his way through an entire pride of starving lions to get here. Therefore nobody raised an eyebrow at the dishabille of the group as they exited from the elevator leading up from the CEO's private underground parking garage and made their way to Angel's office; everybody had all their limbs, nobody was obviously bleeding out, so all was right in their boss's world.

Angel sank into his chair behind his desk gratefully. Sometimes he really appreciated being able to just let the big chair take the weight. In spite of his exertions, Angel was experiencing a pleasant buzz within his body, the after effect of kicking bad guy ass. He only wished the demarcation between the good guys and the bad was always so clear-cut. Raising his head, he was snared by Wesley's amused eyes as, ignoring Dawn's vocal jubilation, the English ex-Watcher looked at both Angel and Spike, who was perched on the arm of the couch, grinning broadly. The three shared a silent but perfectly understanding exchange. That pleasant buzz was due, in part, to the change in Angel's diet from porcine haemoglobin to Wesley. Both he and Spike were riding the action junkie 'high', wanting to feed, and Wesley was aware that his own adrenaline-saturated blood would be especially sweet. Giving a pointed warning look at where Illyria had only just subsided and allowed Fred to re-emerge, the Watcher turned back to the others.

"You guys rock!" Dawn hugged Lorne enthusiastically, delighting as his face went greener still with embarrassed pleasure before grabbing the Groosalug for similar enthusiastic hugging.

"I'm too cool to cuddle," Gunn raised a hand warningly as Dawn released a beetroot-faced Gru, "and I'm still hauling this bad-ass axe."

"Spoilsport." Dawn stuck her tongue out at him. "Thank-you so much! You're so brilliant, and it's only two o'clock. I can be home in time for Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman and pizza. Buffy –"

"Is right here."

There was one of those tiny hiccups of time, where each individual present desperately tries to rewind the last couple of seconds in the hope that maybe they haven't really happened.

Angel slowly stood up, the elation draining from him. Spike's posture slumped slightly as he retained his perch on the couch arm, but his face turned unerringly towards Buffy, his expression one of helpless adoration. They had thrown the double doors of Angel's office back with careless delight, the doors sticking on the carpet wide-open; the newcomers stood framed in the open doorway, bearing enough weaponry for several massacres.

Gunn raised an eyebrow as he checked out the mean-looking black dude with Angel's Slayer love, Fred looked uncertain, Lorne casually laid a hand on the Groosalug's arm, easing the pair of them backwards whilst simultaneously squeezing the limb in a keep quiet warning. Not being nearly as stupid as he acted, Gru kept his lips firmly clamped together. Wesley shifted his body so he was between the Scooby Gang and Fred.

Staavuz licked his lips nervously, the pain in his leg incredible. He could only hope that the loophole still held. George had kept a plethora of guns in his desk drawer for that very reason – while Wolfram & Hart had impenetrable mystical safeguards against the disgruntled guy bursting through the door with a semi-automatic, or the guy bringing in a briefcase that was really a bomb, the safeguards did not 'recognise' any non-mystical weapon, such as a gun, that was already inside the building when the safeguard spells were cast. Of course, his mini-arsenal hadn't done George much good a few months ago when that Beast thing had butchered most of the firm's staff for reasons Staavuz couldn't quite remember. After Staavuz had entered the building in a suit with a briefcase, he had known his way around sufficiently enough to be able to walk to George's office as if he had every right to be there. The office hadn't been snapped up yet and the dead man's fully loaded collection of guns were still present, though very dusty.

Taking the Magnum .357 and placing it in his waistband at the back, Staavuz had placed the semi-automatic machine pistol in his empty briefcase and walked out, making his way up to the floor that overlooked Angel's office, taking up position on the walkway overlooking the outer lobby, his task made easier by the fact that the doors were wide open, giving him a panoramic killing zone. Removing the semi-automatic from the case, he had taken careful aim at the girl. The sudden arrival of a posse who had swept up to take positions in the open doorway didn't bother Staavuz; the bullets would tear through their human bodies and still retain enough force to kill or injure whoever was beyond them.

He glared; he would've much preferred to be having his leg seen to before making for warmer climes, like Acapulco, but he had no choice. Under any normal circumstances he would have cut his losses when his initial attack on Spike failed, but this deal was just too sweet to throw away. Besides, Staavuz had already spent the two million he had been advanced for killing the little human bitch and the two million he would have when the job was done.

Moving carefully and slowly so as not to draw notice, Staavuz settled his aim on the doorway so that while most of his load would hit Dawn Summers, his arc of death would also cut down that smug English bastard and most of the others too. Thus, Staavuz made his last mistake, in that he failed to be aware at all times of everything that was going on around him. Forgetting that that even the most insignificant pawn can become the Queen, Staavuz made the fundamental error of focussing solely on his target; peripheral sight and sound became nothing more than a faint hum to him, instead of paying attention to what others were doing. They were nothing, just upright corpses that wouldn't fall until he pulled the trigger. He was therefore completely unaware of Harmony, who at her secretary's desk was doing what any sensible vampire would do with three Slayers standing less than six feet away – looking around her for a likely escape route.

"Buffy." Dawn looked at her sister and her friends calmly.

The blonde Slayer was the centre of the group, flanked on either side by Faith, Giles, Willow, Xander, Kennedy and Robin Wood. "Mind telling me what the hell you're doing?" Buffy ground out.

"I was being stalked by my murderous demon boyfriend, so I came to LA to ask Spike to kill him." Dawn answered promptly. "We kicked his ass this morning though, so we can go home now…unless you want to hit Rodeo Drive for an hour?"

"I already did the 'what is it with you Summers women and non-humans' gig." Lorne interposed as Xander and Willow exchanged glances.

"Spike." Repeated Buffy as it were a word in an unfamiliar language, looking at the blond vampire, who raised a hand in a half-hearted wave before replacing it on his thigh. Her voice began to rise shrilly as she went on, "A demon was trying to kill you…so you came to Spike?"

"Spike is Dawn's Champion." Wesley answered Buffy as coolly as if discussing the likelihood of rain at Wimbledon Tennis, "Just as Angel was once your Champion."

For an instant Buffy stared at Wesley, her jaw slack, then she looked past him at Angel for the first time, and she stiffened.

"DON'T be ridiculous, Miss Summers." Wesley's voice was a whip-crack that would have flayed the skin off a rhinoceros, "and I will thank-you not to drag the rest of us down to your level. Angel has been my Champion for five years and I do not, nor ever have had, any desire to have sex with him. A romantic relationship with a Champion is a rare, and entirely incidental occurrence."

Dawn straightened and glared at her sister as the group got the subtext and Team Angel directed hostile looks at the Scooby Gang.

"So I'm incapable of dealing with some testosterone-overloaded idiot?" Buffy had to struggle against the hard knot of pain in her stomach as she challenged her sister.

"Right now? In spades!"

That strident comeback was not the response Buffy or the others had expected from their usually cheerful, vivacious 'mascot' and they stared at the young woman. Dawn moved forward, spoiling for a fight, glaring at them. "Have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror lately, Buffy? You're the poster child for nervous exhaustion. Has any one of you people worked a less than eighteen-hour day anytime in the last six weeks?"

"Dawnie," Xander gave her his patented goofy grin. "That's –"

"The whole point!" Dawn threw out a hand towards Buffy. "Look at her! She was only a size eight before she started the working-every-hour-without-food-or-sleep crash diet! I thought Stefan was cool, turns out he was a schmuck, and an obsessive-stalker schmuck at that. But hey, no problem, why should I deal with my own mess when I've got the Slayer to clean up after me? I'm sure you could all have juggled your crippling workloads to deal with pathetic Dawnie and her scuzzy ex-boyfriend!"

"Yes, we could have!" Cried Buffy, "I'm you sister, I'm supposed to –"

"Be so terrified you're going to lose me too that you have panic attacks when I take the garbage out?" Dawn cut her off. "You protect me because you're my sister and you love me. That isn't a one-way street, Buffy. I protect you because you're my sister and I love you. I looked at the people I love the most and saw that they were overworked and exhausted, so I chose your solution. I turned to my Champion."

"Dawn, just because Spike was my Champion when he closed the Hellmouth -"

"He was never your Champion."

"What?" Slowly Buffy turned her head to look at Wesley Wyndham-Pryce who had continued to stand, his arms folded across his chest, looking at her as if she were some undesirable ragamuffin who had wondered into his home from the street.

Angel moved forward but then paused as he reached a spot behind and to the right of Wesley, vacillating uncertainly as he faced protecting his best friend from the woman he loved, sending frantic telepathic commands to Wesley to 'shut up'.

The Englishman obviously wasn't receiving. "Spike has never been your Champion. Throughout Glory's days Spike was the one who supported Dawn face the trauma of adjusting to being human, not The Key, and Spike held Glory off long enough for you to get a clue as to how to save Dawn – and the world. And so on…if the First Evil had succeeded in opening the Hellmouth, Dawn would have been killed, so her Champion ensured it was shut. Ironically, that was the one thing that Wolfram & Hart never even thought about when they sent Angel to Sunnydale with the amulet, intending for him to be rendered a ghost within it and thus under their power and control. Like everyone else, they simply assumed that the Slayer was the only member of the Scooby Gang to have a specific Champion."

Angel and Spike, like everyone else, were exchanging shocked and uncertain glances at each other. Angel had been furious and deeply jealous when Buffy chose Spike as her Champion to close the Hellmouth. The blond vampire had taken the role for the sake of the woman he loved…

"Oh bollocks." Spike straightened as realisation, no pun intended, dawned. Finding himself the cynosure of all eyes he swallowed and went on. "I took the amulet 'cause I'm crazy in love with you. I thought I was being your Champion, but when it actually happened, the most important thing in my mind, the most overriding need in my head, wasn't saving you," he looked at Buffy, "it was saving Dawn. She had to live, at any cost."

"No." Buffy shook her head. Taking a calming breath, she opened her mouth –

"Yes." Wesley Wyndham-Pryce forestalled her. "And before you start one of your epic, heroic and tediously self-righteous oratories, Ms Summers, do I detect a hint of pique?" He raised one eyebrow almost to his hairline sardonically, "Could it be that the reason you are so resistant to the notion is because, if Spike is Dawn's Champion, then you can no longer retain sole place in the mystical spotlight as the only woman in the history of everything to have as her Champion a vampire with a soul?"

Everybody stopped breathing as they saw both Buffy and Wesley's eyes change, sort of slip-out-of-focus-but-not as they each went to that strange mental place that a human goes to inside his or her head when they are about to kill. Angel helplessly prepared to throw himself between the two of them, vowing that if he came through this, he was personally going to take Wesley and beat him to within an inch of his clearly insane life –

"DOWN!!!" Screamed Harmony.

Normally the warning wouldn't have been enough.

But these weren't normal circumstances, and these weren't normal people. They did not simply gape at the crazy screeching blonde chick. Nor did they just stand there and look around wildly, as if expecting to see someone carrying a helpful placard: I'M THE EVIL BAD GUY.

As the sound wave of Harmony's 'O' was still vibrating in the air, the entire assembly was hugging carpet like a lover, or diving behind whatever cover was available. In reflex action Staavuz fired, but his arc was aimed at the chest height level of people now imitating pancake. Glass, pottery, upholstery and wood were brutally slain as he sprayed the room with gunfire. Angel, having been involved in a war of nerves with the cleaners over the fact that he preferred his office couches flush against the wall underneath the outside windows, while they preferred to move them forward into the room a foot or so, mentally promised to apologise profusely as these gaps behind them provided ideal human-sized gopher holes. Over the hideous chudda-chudda of the gun, he heard tables and chairs crash over as they were turned into impromptu shields and Angel fidgeted as he tried to locate everyone's position, relief swamping him as he saw that there were no still shapes sprawled on the floor.

The din stopped abruptly to leave that brief, echoing silence where everyone tries to stop their ears ringing from the concussions and the stink of cordite obliterated your sense of smell.

"OOOOH, DAAAWWNIIIEEE!!" Trilled Staavuz, hefting the semi-automatic and viewing the scene with glee.

Dawn hissed but didn't respond as she crouched behind one couch, the one that was in the top left of the office as you walked in. Buffy, Xander and Robin Wood were on her right, the Slayer's face bearing an expression of fury. Xander retained his perpetual attitude of wry élan, but after all, being shot at did not rate that high a crisis on the Harris freak-o-meter. Robin's dark eyes were unfathomable as he hefted the crossbow he held. To Dawn's left, there was the reassuring chill of her Champion's body. Dawn laid a restraining hand on his arm as she felt the thrumming need to kill surge through him, amazed that he hadn't gone vamp-face yet. Set slightly back directly underneath the walkway that Staavuz was standing on was the best hiding place – behind Harmony's desk, and for all the gravity of the situation, Dawn smiled inside as she pictured Harmony's face as the ditzy blond vampiress crouched down – right next to Slayer Kennedy and Willow. Where was everyone else?

Dawn relaxed slightly as she looked to her left down the back wall of the room. Behind the second couch that was situated along the wall more or less directly opposite the doors crouched Giles at this end nearest to Spike, with Faith next to him, then Fred, who amazingly hadn't – yet – turned into that weird blue Illyria thing, and finally Wesley. Angel's large desk actually swept round in three angle sections, and Angel and Gunn were crouched on the extreme right side, peering warily around the edge of the desk. Where was Lorne - ? Looking to her right, remembering that Lorne and Gru had been at the top end of the room, the opposite end to where Angel's desk was, Dawn sagged as Lorne gave her a little wave from where he and Gru were huddled behind the conference table, having had the presence of mind to pull open those opaque-glass internal double doors to Angel's private CEO conference room.

Dawn licked dry lips; Angel or Spike could have turned Staavuz into a corpse within two seconds, the problem was getting across that large pesky expanse of open space providing him with a clear field of fire in order to reach him!

His back pressed against the back of the couch as he balanced on his haunches, Wesley pulled up his pants leg and liberated the handgun, automatically checking the clip; gambling that Staavuz's hearing was still recovering from his little display, Wesley pulled back the slide and released it, risking Staavuz hearing the familiar ratchet sound.

"You carry a gun here?" hissed Gunn from where he hunkered down next to Angel, drawing the others' attention to the couch.

"I carry a gun everywhere." Wesley adjusted the leather holder on his other shin, making sure he could pluck out the spare clip and insert it within a second if need be.

"You won't be able to make a shot from here." Robin Wood and Xander Harris whispered simultaneously.

As Wesley spared them a brief glance, Xander informed the room at large, "Turned into a Special Forces soldier by Ethan Rayne." Robin Wood shrugged, "United States Marine Corp. First Gulf War."

"Wes-ley." The lethal sibilant emphasis Angel was able to inject into the single 's' available to him was impressive as with a single word he warned the ex-Watcher not to even think about doing anything stupidly heroic, like leaving the safety of the couch and drawing Staavuz's fire.

"You know about Jerry Henderson at the Watcher Academy, look what happened to him," Giles put in to Wesley, his tone light as he tried to send similar telepathic commands for restraint to the younger man, "and he relied on his gun so much he would only take it off to shower…"

Wesley's mouth muscles twisted in a way that gave the false illusion he was smiling. "This model is waterproof."

Whatever response anyone would have made to this was lost as Staavuz impatiently yelled, "Come on, people! I'm the one holding a machine pistol here! Just push the little bitch out into the open and I'll take care of her for you…doesn't that constant yammering annoy you too?"

Buffy looked down the room to Angel and their eyes met; they needed to come up with a plan, some distraction that would enable at least one of them to make it up to that balcony and pulverise Staavuz into a bad memory…but anyone providing a diversion would end up like a sieve and that was not acceptable –

"There's no point to this, Staavuz!" Wesley's yell made them all start. "Leave now and you'll still have your life."

Staavuz's laugh echoed loud. "Oh, don't you sound scary, not. Don't think so, Brit boy. In case your bunch of sitting ducks missed it, I've got a clear field of fire and a semi-automatic machine pistol that rocks on my side!"

"And I've got three Slayers, three vampires, the world's most powerful witch, an unconquerable hero, two demons and assorted pissed off bad-asses on mine!" Wesley roared back. Letting the disconcerted silence hang for a beat, he called out again, "You've brought a knife to a gunfight, Staavuz. Cut your losses and walk while you still can."

Staavuz ignored the nagging feeling that he should do exactly that, uneasiness creeping over him like cold fingers as he listened to the Brit's recitation of what exactly was in the room with him. Three Slayers? "Like to oblige, Brit boy," Staavuz called, "but this is kinda a ham and eggs breakfast situation. Chicken's involved, but the pig's committed, and well, I'm not the feathered contingent here. So I think I'll just shoot my fish in that sweet little barrel of yours."

"Just how stupid are you, Staavuz?" Jeered Wesley. "You've been strummed like a guitar, you idiot. You'll never be paid for this hit!"

"Hit? What hit?" demanded Dawn for all of them, struggling to follow this sudden ball from left field.

"Yeah, what you talking about, Brit boy?" Staavuz jeered back, though with none of his previous sneering arrogance – the Brit sounded too confident, too sure of himself, especially for a man about to be shot to death.

"There never was any cash, Staavuz! Come on, think about it! I'll bet your employer is paying you way over the odds for this job – what is it, two million dollars, three million? Just for one talkative teenager. You've been paid to take out troublesome girls before – inconvenient sisters, daughters, wives and such. Doesn't it strike you as odd that your boss should desperately need one insignificant girl to be so dead?"

"Four million, actually," Congratulated Staavuz, relaxing a fraction, the guy was just fishing. He had intuition, not facts. "And well, since I've already spent the two million advance, I gotta –"

"There was no two million advance, you moron!" Wesley moved slightly towards the edge of the couch, ignoring the fact that he had the rapt attention of everyone within hearing range. "Let me tell you what happened: your boss sat there and let you watch while they tapped a few computer keys and set two million United States dollars to a Swiss bank account for you, and then promised you the next two million when Dawn was a corpse."

"Yeah, so?" Staavuz demanded harshly, the British man having spoken so accurately it was almost as if he had invisibly been in the room when –

"So, that two million dollars was removed from that account and put back in your employer's kitty by the time you got to the bottom of the yard!" Wesley bawled back at the assassin. "It's all smoke and mirrors, Staavuz. The reason your boss could afford to be so generous with the killing fee was because whoever he or she is, they knew you'd never live to collect."

"So you think!" Staavuz yelled with fear-fuelled-anger, hearing the convincing ring of truth in the human's claim. Beyond his greed, he had wondered at the unusually large sum being promised to kill Dawn Summers.

Wesley didn't look at Dawn's white, wide-eyed face, feeling the weight of their stares upon him. "I don't think, I know, and I'll tell you why. How right am I about this part, Staavuz: your boss throws a friendly arm around your shoulders, takes you to some teenage party, points out the cute kid across the room and says, " ' I'll give you four million dollars to whack that girl over there, name's Dawn Summers. It'll be a cakewalk 'cause she's got nobody except a deadbeat sister to bother about her.'" What d'you say, am I close?"

Damn near verbatim. "Maybe!" Hedged Staavuz. "So what?"

"So, my dear duped Staavuz, your boss never bothered to mention to you that Dawn Summers elder sister was The Slayer."

"What?!" Staavuz was unable to prevent the blurted exclamation.

"Exactly! You've been royally suckered!" Wesley pressed home his advantage, calling out loudly and rapidly but making sure his speech was intelligible. "Your boss knows your M.O. Staavuz, that's why they hired you to be their fall demon. You kill the Slayer's sister and there is nowhere on this planet or any other where you could run fast enough or hide yourself deep enough; no dimension you can flee to that's far enough away to stop the Slayer hunting you down and ripping you into a thousand little pieces of shredded flesh. Even if you managed to pull your cornered-rat escape act and get the cops to do their usual shoot-out thing to your chest, you'd still be dead, because Buffy Summers wouldn't be sat at home weeping for her sister, Staavuz. Buffy Summers would make one hundred and ten percent sure that her sister's killer was deader than flares, and that means when you jumped off that mortuary slab with your tender orange flesh all regenerated, you'd find Buffy Summers right there waiting for you to stroll out the doors. Dawn's sister is Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and just like the Terminator, she's relentless and remorseless and she absolutely will not stop until you are dead."

The words, buoyed up by complete, ringing conviction seemed to hang in the air like invisible wind chimes for a tense eternity.

"You're lying!" Staavuz half screamed, his voice cracking as panic began to set in, the fact that Dawn Summers had some major mystically empowered figures on her side finally impinging on him.

"I can prove it!" Wesley roared back, feeling sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades. This was it – right here was where he either lured Staavuz close enough to take him out, or else blew it and saw several of his friends get shot to death in a protracted gunfight.

"What are you talking about?" Staavuz could hardly think past the surging pain in his leg.

"The computer on Harmony's desk!" Wesley called as he slipped his gun into his waistband at the back of his pants. "I can show you that the two million dollars has been taken out of the account. That'll prove you've been set up!" Sucking in a breath, Wesley came to his feet from behind the couch, his arms raised and spread palms up in the universal sign of surrender. He heard Angel growl but did not take his gaze off Staavuz, his muscles reflexively tensing against the half-expected impact of bullets tearing into his flesh.

Staavuz came to a decision; step by cautious step he made his way down the steps to the lobby, the barrel of his gun never wavering from Wesley's chest as the human slowly moved forward, keeping his hands spread in the gesture of surrender. The others with the human also stood up but froze when Staavuz's finger flexed on the trigger of his gun as it pointed as Wesley. Staavuz didn't take his eyes off the human, but he could feel the burning gaze of the Vampire With The Soul boring into his brain and knew that it was Angelus who was standing within a few feet of him.

As the three women slowly stood up from their hiding place behind the secretary's desk, Harmony without ceremony shoved Kennedy into Willow and stood square in front of them, her face so white it was completely colourless. Wesley risked giving the vampiress a tiny inclination of his head in gratitude; bullets wouldn't kill Harmony, and her action would fool Staavuz into assuming she was one of the three Slayers, blinding him to the real twin dangers of Willow and Kennedy. Reaching the desk, Wesley went around the back, placing his own frame in front of Harmony as double protection for Willow and Kennedy so he could reach the computer. Now he was facing the members of the two Circles of Nine, Team Angel and the Scooby Gang, who looked back at him with strained, frightened…and furious faces. If I make it through the next five minutes, Angel is going to kill me; Wesley snapped back into it as Staavuz thrust the gun towards his favourite skull.

Wesley's body was jolted as Staavuz ripped the gun from the back of his waistband and shoved it into his own pocket. For a moment death hovered as Staavuz's finger trembled, then the demon moved his finger away again. "Do it!" The demon snarled, twitching the barrel nervously as the Slayer behind Wesley shielded the redhead and the brunette with her body, unnerved by the fact that those two women were looking at him with homicidal rage instead of fear.

Tapping keys while standing upright wasn't the easiest thing to do, but Wesley had no intention of sitting down – not only would it have meant leaving Harmony in Staavuz's line of fire, but would restrict his ability to shave vital microseconds off his reaction time should he need to move fast. Wesley could only hope that in the aftermath of this little terror interlude that nobody asked him exactly how he had come by this deeply criminal knowledge regarding untraceable Swiss bank accounts, but he had experience of how tenacious these people could be.

"The screen your boss had up probably looked something like this," Wesley pressed a finger momentarily on the flat-screen monitor, keeping his voice low and calm, making his body stance submissive, acutely aware of the way that the gang were creeping closer to them like leopards stalking inch by frozen inch closer to the plump, oblivious gazelle.

Harmony craned her neck to see what was on the screen, raising her hands in a placatory gesture identical to Wesley's earlier one as Staavuz growled at her, but the vampiress's action had enabled the encircling predators to gain another inch and a half of ground on Staavuz's position; I may actually live through this after all. Out of the corner of his eye, Wesley saw how Willow's lips were trembling slightly, but not out of fear. The world's pre-eminent sorceress was mouthing words in silence to herself…go, girl.

"Then your boss typed in a few passwords." Wesley suited actions to words and then reaching out, turned on the computer's speakers, assuming the money transfer program was state of the art. "Finally, you have…

"YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY DEPOSITED TWO MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLAR CURRENCY INTO THIS ACCOUNT." The computer said in a mellifluous female tone to match the message on the screen.

"Am I right?" Wesley finished.

"You're not showing me anything I don't already know." Staavuz's finger caressed the trigger.

Wesley smiled, not nicely. "Ah, but now I'm going to show you what went down after you left the room and went on your merry murderous way, in the fond belief that you were rich beyond the dreams of avarice." With exquisite care, he entered another code, tapping keys as two more screens came and went. Finally the screen came up with a large message in red font that it also intoned in the same syrupy female voice:

"YOU HAVE DEPOSITED THIS SUM WITHIN THE LAST FIVE MINUTES. ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO WITHDRAW THIS SUM?"

Clicking on the YES button, Wesley watched the screen dissolve and then:

"THE SUM OF TWO MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLAR CURRENCY HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN AND RE-DEPOSITED IN THE ORIGINAL ACCOUNT."

Irrational fury swamped Staavuz as the sight of the solid evidence of how he had been played, set up to kill and then be killed, the fall guy. Unaware he was howling in his mindless rage, his arm lashed out to smash the human back across the desk, bringing up the gun and tightening his finger on the trigger to tear the human male's body apart with it's deadly load. From a standing start five feet away, a blue blur somersaulted through the air and crashed through Harmony's desk, reducing it to kindling as something smashed into Staavuz's torso and hurled him fifteen feet clear across the room to land on his back, the semi-automatic spinning lazily away in another direction.

Scrambling backwards on his butt, oblivious to the soft whimpers he was emitting, Staavuz grabbed the Magnum and let loose, blasting straight at the chest of the glowing blue skinny chick. She merely stood there allow the shots to hit her torso before striding forward without a mark and plucking the empty gun that Staavuz kept trying to fire from his hand, crushing it like a coke can.

Lifting him up by the throat and dangling him like he weighed no more than a feather, Illyria turned it's head to where its mate was now sort of standing, supported either side by the two Dead-That-Lived. The other humans were watching it with due reverence. Illyria looked at the Dawn human spawn, this one's intended prey. "Most remarkable." It commented.

"We noticed." Xander-human commented, giving Illyria a smile.

The Xander-male appeared less afraid than the other humans and Illyria caught the faint vestiges of a demoness's scent over most of his body, including his human genitalia and nipples…ah, Xander-human was a demon's mate, as Wesley-human was Illyria's. Turning it attention back to the Staavuz-thing, Illyria considered it. "This is a demon species, yet it is inferior to the human insects."

"Really…in what way is it inferior to us…insects?"

Illyria looked at the tall man who had pulled off his spek-tah-kals and was polishing them with the edge of his jacket. There had been an undertone of challenge in his tone, a lack of the due respect. Illyria looked closer; this male was a Mahju, as was her mate. The Fred-human's memories indicated that this was one of the Mahjai known as Watchers, as Illyria's mate had been. The Mahju was aged and wise in his power.

"I slept for millions of years until the human plague passed, but their grip is stronger than ever on this world. I did not understand how they could last, such a weak species. No horns or spines, no armoured flesh, not even any consistent powers of the spirit. Yet they have great skill and cunning." Illyria answered the older Mahju. "They will work together against a common enemy and lesser ones will die to give the great warriors time to attack. This is most bizarre, for in battle, the only goal of each of the warriors I commanded was to survive. The Dawn is not the spawn, or the mate, or even the species of the white-haired vampire Spike, yet he was prepared to sacrifice his endless life so she could perpetuate her ephemeral existence in this world. My mate also was willing to have his life ended so that you all could live." Illyria looked at her mate, whose flesh was beginning to mottle and darken in the manner indicating many burst blood-vessels beneath the skin. "I will discuss your actions later, my mate…at length."

Staavuz gurgled desperately. "Kill them! We're both demons, here! We should stick together -"

Illyria looked at the creature in bafflement. "The Dawn is still a spawn of her species, yet she has great wisdom, for she saw that you are not worthy as a mate. You have caused great inconvenience to me. You even dared to strike my mate."

"Illyria -!" Wesley tried to gasp out, then winced as his abused ribs protested the movement. Braced either side of him, each one helping him stand by having one of their arms around his waist while he had one arm each across their respective shoulders, Spike and Angel clamped down their grips, holding him still effortlessly, neither best pleased with him for setting himself up as Staavuz's main target.

Bored with the creature's struggling, Illyria simply tore its head from its shoulders and dropped the twitching carcass on the floor. Snapping out one arm without even a single glance, Illyria effortlessly caught the spear weapon tossed to it by the Xander-human, and spinning it in its grasp, plunged it down into the carcass's undamaged leg, straight through the third vital organ of the demon; the corpse went into spasms for a moment, then stopped moving.

Illyria dropped the head and turned to examine its mate up close, completely uninterested in the dead thing. "I like her." Xander-human commented to the room generally, making Illyria's mate give a funny little growl in the back of his throat and his eyes looked at the other male with a hot glow in a manner that indicated displeasure.

The two Dead-That-Lived wisely separated themselves from Illyria's mate, and it carefully traced the marks on his torso, noting the redness and unnatural heat of his flesh indicating injuries. "The Fred-human is very loud and annoying inside." Illyria commented irritably as its mate stood and let its fingers trace the wounds made. "I will allow her to emerge now so she will stop the noise. We will speak more of this later, mate."

The Scooby Gang stared as the armoured blue demon seemed to slump and shrink, and then a long-haired, skinny brunette was standing in front of Wesley. She had big, soulful puppy eyes, which were now a smoky almost-black reminiscent of a very angry junkyard dog. Wesley gasped anew as she punched his chest right where Staavuz's blow had thrown him back. "Were you trying to commit suicide!! What crazy-assed plan was that!"

"One that worked." Wesley retorted. "Do you mind if we do the S&M later, dear?"

Fred's jaw dropped and then she seemed, finally, to recall that they were standing in the middle of a crowd. "Oh…ah…"

"It's okay, they get you like that." Faith assured Fred with perhaps more enthusiasm in her tone that was healthy. "Men – can't live with them, can't live without occasionally kicking hell out of 'em."

Xander turned his single eye upon Robin, "And this is the love of your life?"

"Yeah – and which of us was going to marry the vengeance demon, again?" Robin tossed back.

"We're not done here."

Everyone stopped at the quiet but lethal tone.

Buffy Summers folded her arms in front of her chest and regarded them with one raised eyebrow, her mouth tight. "Not that I don't appreciate you putting on some light entertainment, Angel, but we're not through with the fact that my sister –"

"Yes, we are done." Dawn moved to stand in front of her sister. "I didn't come to LA because I don't trust you to help me or whatever other paranoid crap is swimming through your brain right now. I came because I love you and I was trying not to burden you with any more problems than you're already trying to deal with. I did what I had to do to fix things. Obviously you don't agree with what I chose to do, but that's tough. I would do it again, and if I feel I need to in the future, I will do it again. Get over it."

"This is not a game!" Buffy yelled at her sister, pointing at the remains of Staavuz with a finger, "That thing was going to kill you. I have good reason for not wanting you to be involved with the Slaying, Dawn, because you could get killed and I can't lose –"

"You will lose me." Dawn said flatly. "Like I lost my mother, and like I lost my sister once before – you were dead for forty-seven days, remember? I can't guarantee that I'll outlive you, Buffy. I could be killed tomorrow or live to be a cranky nonagenarian. None of these people who care about you can promise you they won't die. All I can do is promise I'll do my best to live for you. But one thing – I am involved. I can't live my life pretending your world doesn't exist. I can't not help you do what you do. So our world is far more dangerous than most people's, yeah, but then I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, or take a fatal header down a flight of steps. You can't protect me from that."

"Dawn, it's too _dangerous_." Buffy said in helpless frustration; didn't anyone standing here like giant lemons _understand_ that she was trying to protect her sister? Dawn might not get it, but Angel sure as hell did, and Spike. "I don't believe how either of you could let her –"

"Because it's her right." Spike, who had moved back from the tense group to lean against the only still upright piece of Harmony's desk, now straightened up. Folding his arms across his chest, his manner authoritative in a way that he had never displayed before, Spike went on, "Dawn isn't a child, and she doesn't need protecting from the world anymore – you _defeated _Glory, remember? Dawn is as much a part of the Scooby Gang as Giles, and Xander and Willow and the simple fact is, Slayer, that _you need her – _actually more than she needs you."

"I need Dawn to risk her life for me?" Buffy's eyes flashed dangerously.

"No, you need her to fight by your side, which is where she _should _be. You might be the one who always gets the Emmy, pet, but you wouldn't have a chance if weren't for this lot working their asses off in the background who never get the credit. Batman needed Alfred and Robin, Clark Kent needed Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White at the Daily Planet. Captain Kirk needed Bones and Spock. You're the car, pet, but these people standing around you are the gas in your tank."

"Spike, we understand what you're saying, but –" Giles began softly.

"No, you don't. Let me elaborate: '_if any man does not know how to care for his own household, how will he then care for the congregation of God?'"_

"First Book of Timothy Chapter Three Verse Five?" Robin said on the heels of the quote, staring at the blond vampire incredulously.

There was a startled pause, then:

"_Spike_ quoting _Scripture_? This I have to hear." Buffy challenged defensively.

Good, because Saint Paul was spot on." Spike shot straight back at her. "What you're doing is great. Training all these new Slayers, making sure they're not alone and not scared out of their minds for longer than necessary. Making the Watcher's Council useful instead of what that bunch of conceited ponces made it – great. But you need a higher purpose to do all that for, because if you haven't got that then you lose hope and once you lose hope, you end up a moping depressive, like tall dark and dreary over here."

"And _my_ higher purpose would be…?"

"Dawn, and every other person you care about. St Paul was making the point that a guy couldn't very well claim to be qualified to look after all the other Christians if his _own_ family was in trouble."

Spike moved unconsciously to the centre of the room, holding the rapt attention of everyone as he shrugged with a nonchalance that belied the fervour of his words. "The next Apocalypse Express is on its way into town, people, in fact according to _some_ it's already at the station, and only one thing about an apocalypse that you can count on – there'll be bodies. This is the eternal war between Good and Evil, people; it's not pretty, and there are no rules."

Spike paused significantly and nodded approvingly as Buffy – albeit with obvious effort – refrained from retorting and actually listened.

"Just because you're a Hero doesn't mean you get to kick Big Bad ass and then with a single bound be free. Ask Tara, Anya, Cordelia, Kendra, or Jenny Calendar…or Fred, standing right over there, who has to share her sweet Texas self with a ten million-year-old hell demon. Some of us are going to die, but the _reason_ we keep fighting against impossible odds and ever-bigger hordes of slimy demons is because we all have – in whatever form it takes – our own Dawn. You each fight for the Dawn in your life, which is great, but you need to make your Dawn _part _of your life, not push him or her away, because that way you'll lose them, one way or another, in some cases that will be literally. The moral is this, grasshoppers: There's _no point_ getting into Paradise if the people you've done it all _for_ aren't there to share it with you."

"I just –" Buffy stopped and bit her lip.

"Love, we _all_ 'just'. But the day you start trying to control those you love because you think _you_ know best is the day you become Staavuz. You don't toss Dawn a battle-axe and send her out to go _mano-a-mano_ against an Ethros demon, but she's just as much a part of your support network as Brainiac Giles, Uber-Witch Willow, Fearsome Faith, Roistering Robin, Xander the King of Carpenters, Killer Kennedy, et cetera, et cetera, so treat Dawn with the respect that position deserves."

"How'd you get so smart?" Buffy whispered, her eyes glistening.

"Natural born genius." Spike shrugged. "And now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going home to my nice, noisy, massively haunted hotel. _Passions_ is on in half an hour, and Timmy's down the well again."

_To be continued in Chapter 7…_

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	7. Prophetic Certainty

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 7 – Prophetic Clarity**

"Heeeeessss." Wesley drew in a breath sharply as Illyria was less than genteel about applying ointment to his bruised side.

It looked at him without sympathy as it put the cap back on the tube and laid it on the night table beside the bed. "Your actions were reckless, my mate." Illyria had allowed Fred-human to remain until they had returned to their lair, and then it had re-emerged with surprising little resistance from Fred-human, who was not happy with the risks her mate had taken to destroy the Staavuz-creature and who had encouraged Illyria to forthrightly express these.

"It was a calculated risk." Wesley acknowledged that he was at a disadvantage laying naked in the bed with Illyria fully clothed sat on the edge and regarding him with dangerous irritation, but Illyria wouldn't hurt him…very much.

"That you encouraged. You made the demon focus on you." Illyria pointed out. "The others could have drawn its ire with less risk, such as the two vampires."

Wesley didn't really want to think about Angel or Spike at the minute but what the hell, if Illyria was going to punish him, so be it… "The demon was threatening my mate and my family," he spoke with a flat lack of contrition, "so I attacked it. I will do the same again if I have to…" Wesley turned his head away from Illyria, "…of course I never thought you would _want_ your mate to cower like a _Klaarburt_ while others fought."

A thumb and forefinger far stronger than steel took his chin and forced his head back around. Illyria looked at him steadily, "You were very brave, mate. I and the Fred-human are both very proud of your warrior skills. It is just…I do not wish to see you hurt, but oftentimes you are so determined to protect the dark Dead-That-Lives whom you serve as magician that you do not always think things through."

"I am sorry, I will try harder in the future." Wesley answered sincerely.

Standing up, Illyria stripped off its garments and carefully moved to lie beside him, tucking the covers around them before embracing Wesley. "It is all that we ask. Sleep now."

Wesley stroked Fred's soft hair until the demon's eyes fluttered closed, acutely conscious of the carefully folded handkerchief in his jacket pocket downstairs as he recalled the events following the killing of Staavuz and Spike's grand exit. Of all the creatures in the universe to have the ability to see through the sophistry people surrounded themselves with, why Spike?

A question for which there was probably no proper answer. Everyone had been a little dazed as they stood looking at each other in the wake of Spike's departure. Wesley understood that they were all coming down off the adrenaline high, having psyched themselves up for a major fight only for Illyria to pretty much clean house.

It had been Buffy and Angel who had taken the lead again, the blonde Slayer looking around her with suspicion and grudging interest. "So, Wolfram & Hart…"

No the most encouraging opening, but Angel had taken it and run with it, giving them a brief tour of the building – Willow had gone all glassy eyed at the sight of Fred's lab, Giles had practically drooled when Wesley rather sheepishly showed him his office with the source books, et cetera, and they ended up en masse in one of the conference rooms.

His mind always turning over the Scroll of Niamh, Wesley had concluded during the tour that Spike had to be the Lock of Dawn's Key. When Spike had made that crack about Fred having to share her body with a hell-demon, Wesley had suddenly realised that the phrase he had translated in the Niamh Scroll as "Two-faced One" could also mean "fused together", as in Illyria and Fred sharing the body. Illyria's epiphany that Staavuz, though a demon, was inferior to Dawn, though she was still little more than a human child, had 'illuminated enlightenment' to Wesley by making him realise who he should focus attention on – the Scroll had to be referring in _some_ way to Dawn Summers, whose first name even meant the rising of the sun, or increasing light. This understanding had come almost immediately after his previous one, which had struck Wesley just as he had been sarcastically telling Buffy that Spike had closed the Hellmouth as Dawn's Champion not hers – a lock basically closed a door, and that was really what Spike had done, locking the Hellmouth.

Acutely aware that he needed to pay close attention to anything that was said now that the Harbinger – Staavuz – had been and gone, Wesley's antenna had shot up when the idea of Team Angel and the Scooby Gang linking up and working together via the Internet and such had first been mooted. If _that_ idea wasn't of great mystical significance, Wesley didn't know what was, but still it didn't quite seem to fit the bill. The upshot was that the Scoobies had decided to remain for a few days, Angel, with an evil smile, inviting them to stay at _his_ haunted hotel.

Focussed on anything significant that the Scoobies might say, Wesley hadn't really paid attention as Buffy and company decided to go to the Hyperion with Gru and Lorne as escorts. Willow and Fred had gone to the latter's lab to see if they could find any electronic trace of who had been Staavuz's boss, intended interrogation of the demon being the reason why Wesley had tried to stop Illyria killing him, while Gunn had headed down to Contracts to see there was any trace of the shady deal there.

As his side throbbed, Wesley ruefully acknowledged that even now he was always making the mistake of forgetting just how dangerous _Angel_ was.

Everyone feared Angelus, and rightly so, for he was Evil with a capital 'E' – highly intelligent, ingeniously cunning, and a master at pulling off sick, twisted Masterpiece Theatre to out-psyche his victims before he killed them – or rather tortured them very slowly to a death that was a merciful release. The brief glimpse of Angelus when that idiot actress had slipped Angel a Mickey had been quite enough for Wesley without living through Angelus loosed during their battles with the Beast servant of Jasmine; acting under the evil influence of the demon host Cordelia might have been at the time, but as she had rightly said, Angelus had hated them because they were Angel's link with Humanity. If Angelus could have killed Wesley, Fred, Gunn, Lorne and Cordelia, he would have severed Angel's link with the world, removed everything that Angel was fighting for.

Wesley hadn't been under any illusions when he brought the Kung-Sun-Die mystic in to remove Angel's soul. He had known that should Angelus get loose, his primary targets would have been Cordelia and Wesley. They had known Angel back in Sunnydale, of all of them were the most deeply woven threads of Angel's life. Somewhat chauvinistically, Angelus viewed Cordelia as merely 'the love interest', but as Angel's second-in-command, best friend, adviser, guide on the road to redemption…and betraying kidnapper of his son, Wesley was the focus of a deeper hate.

He and Angel had never officially reconciled, or talked at all about what had happened when Wesley had stolen Connor, and since Angel's solution had been to erase all knowledge of his son from the group, Wesley could hardly bring the matter into the open, nor was he sure he wanted to. While it had ended badly, Wesley had no _regrets_ about doing everything he could to protect both Angel and Connor, and he knew Angel was likely to react badly to his less than profound penitence. When Cordelia had let Angelus out, the ex-Watcher had known that Angelus would be gunning for him most of all – besides his own rage, Angelus had tapped into Angel's unresolved anger with Wesley over Connor.

Though Cordelia – or rather Jasmine acting through her – had killed Lilah to throw them off the scent, Angelus would have killed her because of her and Wesley's relationship. There had been no clearly marked return to the fold of Team Angel after he had fished Angel out of the ocean, Wesley had just kept turning up when they needed his help, but Angel had always been aware of Lilah's scent on Wesley's body, and Angelus would have punished Wesley brutally for it.

But that was the mistake that everyone tended to make. They were so focussed on _Angelus_ as the homicidal maniac alter ego that they often didn't stop to think just how lethal _Angel_ could be when he was angry. With Fred and Willow joining in, Wesley hadn't been able to resist Angel's fussing over his bruising where Staavuz had thrown him back on Harmony's desk and Wesley had been rather amused at Angel shepherding him solicitously to one of the medical rooms to get seen to while Willow and Fred scurried off to the lab to do science stuff. Angel's goofy smile had even fooled the always-lurking Illyria. That amusement had been obliterated the instant Wesley and Angel stepped into the deserted medical room and Wesley had been thrown across the room to hit the opposite wall.

Angel had pinned Wesley there by the throat before he could more than gasp in shock; his voice a low, sibilant hiss, Angel had verbally flayed him for his stunt with Staavuz, before warning the ex-Watcher in future that he _would_ give Angel a heads up if he came across any pertinent information instead of dropping it into the mix like a verbal hand grenade, as Wesley had done with the fact that Staavuz, far from being just a sick excuse for a boyfriend, was a professional hitman. Recognising the underlying anger Angel could not express, but also Angel's fear of losing Wesley as he had lost Doyle, Cordy and in a way, Connor, the ex-Watcher had raised his own hand to grasp the arm that Angel was using to pin him to the wall…

* *

"I'm sorry." Wesley croaked, trying to convey everything he could not say because Angel didn't know he remembered.

The fingers slowly relaxed their grip around Wesley's throat and Angel withdrew his arm. Though needing the wall to remain standing was a factor, Wesley was also not stupid enough to try and move suddenly to escape; Angel was tapped into his inner demon, which was hard-wired to bring down fleeing prey.

"_You_ don't seem to be valuing your life much at the moment," Angel said quietly, "but _I_ do. If you ever do anything this harebrained again and get yourself killed I swear I'll resurrect you just so I can kill you myself for being so stupid."

Wesley lowered his head in submission to the soft but deadly serious growl.

Blowing out a breath, Angel stepped back. "Go sit on the examining table. I'll get the bandages and clean you up."

"It's okay –" Wesley shut up instantly as the dark vampire looked at him and instead obediently went and sat, taking off his shirt.

"Interesting. Pity I can't practise this look in a mirror if it gets you doing what you're told for a change." Angel said sardonically as he grabbed the ointment and crepe bandages from the cupboards.

Carefully the vampire checked Wesley's torso, ignoring the ex-Watcher's hiss as he removed a couple of splinters that would have been unnoticeable to human vision, before pressing lightly to check for invisible damage such as cracked and broken ribs, or any sign that the ribs had punctured a lung. "You're just badly bruised." He reassured Wesley, carefully applying ointment and bandage to the worst affected areas. "You're going to turn a sort of deep-purple-yellow-orange-red-blue with hints of green by the end of the week."

"Thanks." Wesley hissed slightly as the vampire touched a tender spot. "Do you think Fred and Willow or Gunn will find anything?"

Giving a sniff at the obvious subject change, Angel decided that Wesley had been chastised enough. "I doubt it. Like you so eloquently explained for us in the peanut gallery back there, it was a fiendish but very neat set-up. Staavuz is paid a fortune in phantom money to kill a kid he doesn't know is the Slayer's sister by pretending to be the psycho-stalker boyfriend. Unfortunately these days that's such a common enough scenario that possibly even Buffy wouldn't have looked any further. She'd have probably killed Staavuz without ever wondering if maybe there was something deeper behind it than Dawn attracting the wrong kind of guy."

Wincing as he slid off the table and donned his shirt again, Wesley risked a little _badinage_, "Let's hope our Dawn isn't three for three."

Angel smiled back with bittersweet humour. "Oh yeah. Buffy: vampire – secret government assassin – vampire. Dawn – vampire, demon…"

"The only way she _can_ go is up." Wesley had murmured to himself at this succinct but painfully accurate recitation of the Summers girls' love-life to date.

"Don't bank on it." Angel cautioned, satisfied that Wesley wasn't seriously injured and _was_ suitably chastised for his little stunt. "You know what they say – blood will tell."

The dark vampire turned away, beginning to exit the room, unaware of the arrested motion of his friend, who had stared after him with shock and realisation.

* *

Wesley allowed his heavy lids to close; it had been ridiculously easy. The Scoobies had stayed several days, and the following night the entire gang got together at the Hyperion for a meal – slipping into Wes-the-dork mode while they made a quick salad in the kitchen, it had been easy to 'slip' with his knife and cut Dawn's finger, his profuse apologies enabling him to dab the wound and secret the handkerchief in his pocket where it now lay, waiting. But other important agreements had been made over the last few days too, tentative reconciliation between various parties…

_To be concluded in Chapter 8…_

© 2008, C. D. Stewart


	8. Epilogue

**HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON**

**(Part 2)**

**Chapter 8 - Epilogue**

"Ahem."

"Hi." Angel straightened away from his desk as Buffy tentatively entered the room, giving everyone gathered a somewhat fixed smile.

Both Angel and Spike's faces took on identical expressions that veered perilously close to naked adoration; everyone else in the room – Lorne, Gunn, Wesley, Harmony, Xander, Faith and Robin Wood, focussed intensely on the décor; the carpet, ceiling, lamps and view of skyscrapers out the window took on a rapt fascination.

"Is everything..?" Angel began.

"Set up." Buffy nodded. "Willow and Fred have done something…way too complicated for me to understand with the computers, so that new red phone on your desk is a secure hotline to Sunnydale and we have a secure network link too, we're going to start updating each others' systems tomorrow."

There was a momentary pause as everyone sort of didn't look at each other, none wanting to be the first to officially bring the last few days of cautious détente to a close by saying 'Goodbye' or more likely, 'We gotta get back to Sunnydale.' Nowhere was that more apparent than in the painful triangle of Buffy, Angel and Spike, standing staring at each other, so close together yet so far apart.

When Buffy had sent Andrew to collect Dana from LA, the revelation that the Slayer and her Scooby Gang no longer trusted Angel now he ran Wolfram & Hart had cut deep. However, over the last few days of them seeing that Angel was as uneasy with himself being the CEO of the evil firm as everyone else seemed to be, the Scoobies had pretty much unclenched. Now both teams were officially working together; Buffy had just begun sending out the most capable Slayers to hotspots all over the world, creating a network of Chosen Ones that would criss-cross the globe.

Riley Finn and his wife Sam and their team-mate Graham Miller, as survivors of Professor Maggie Walsh's Initiative, had been contacted and informed of the present situation. Angel, in turn had provided the Scooby Gang – and by extension Finn & Company – with an edited account of his World War II secret submarine trip, which illustrated how far back the Initiative – and how far back its corruption – had gone. In a brief private aside, Xander had explained to Angel that the information would go a long way to assuaging Riley Finn and Graham Miller's residual guilt over being part of those atrocities, as both had blamed themselves for not seeing through Maggie Walsh's spiel. The fact that the Initiative had gone Dark Side decades before Maggie Walsh got anywhere near it – and that she herself had probably had no knowledge of the covert organisation's real longevity or real agenda – would go a long to making them feel less stupid and culpable.

As it happened, the sharing of _that_ information had apparently triggered an unexpected beneficial outcome. The murkier elements of the government that operated Finn's team had made no overt response, but over the past few weeks, minor problems that the Scoobies had been facing, such as compensation claims over the destruction of Sunnydale in a violent but peculiarly localised 'earthquake', had been expedited, as had their zoning applications and re-building permits.

Not a bit of which avoided the awkwardness of this moment. Sometimes being the world's pre-eminent Slayer was excruciating – so the queen of the slayers followed her instincts. Stepping forward, she stretched out her arms and placed the palm of each hand flat against the chests of the two vampires with souls, as if hoping to feel the vibration of hearts that did not beat. "Thank you, both." Her fingers flexed minutely as if seeking to tighten her clasp, but then she stepped back. Lorne's ruby red eyes were unashamedly wet and everyone found a lump in their throats; this was the ultimate love triangle.

"I-I-Is it okay, now?"

Heads snapped around at the tremulous voice, and a thin dark-haired girl shuffled into the room, clutching a large bag to her chest as if contained the crown jewels. Buffy had mentioned that another of the Slayers was coming down to LA today to bring some information Willow needed to secure the mystical safeguards on the secure-line red phone that had already been christened the 'bat-phone', but none of Team Angel had given any thought to the fact that it might be…

Her eyes were fixed on Spike with an expression of remorse and terror. The blond vampire's deathly white skin went a shade paler still: Dana, the mentally ill Slayer whom he had rescued, and who had subsequently tortured him to - had he been human - death.

But he was Spike, and he had been with Angelus and then Drusilla for a century; the human wasn't born that could match either his Sire or Grandsire when it came to the art of inflicting pain. "Hello, Dana, pet."

"I-I-I…" Taking a fresh breath, Dana tried again, "Dawn got you this…to say thank you…but I asked to bring it, I…wanted to say sorry...you know."

"Here." Realising the damaged Slayer was incapable of it, Buffy gently prized the bag from her arms and held it out to Spike.

Taking it, Spike realised everyone was waiting, so he pulled the object out. It was a large, beautifully leather-bound book, inlaid with rich emerald and ruby colours and gilt edged pages. It was obviously very old and very expensive. Spike smiled, "Keats?"

"It's your favourite, right?" Dana asked anxiously.

"Yeah," Spike traced his fingers over the cover gently, unaware the others were watching his soft smile with amazement. "Lost most of mine – they were in my crypt when the crater turned Sunnydale subterranean."

"There's a…" Dana gestured, "…inscription, that Dawn wrote…"

Opening the book, Spike's eyes widened. His voice suddenly hoarse, he read aloud: "To William, love, Little Bit."

"They'll be back in Sunnydale by now."

Spike did not turn as Angel came to stand beside him, neither of their reflections showing in the windowpanes of Angel's office. Both stared out at the city that heaved and teemed with sheer life in the hot midday sun, protected by the necrotempered glass from being harmed by the bright light that bathed them.

At the moment, it emphasised how the woman they both loved was probably walking down a sidewalk back to her life in Sunnydale, and how neither of them could follow. Humans needed sunlight to live; it was death to vampires. "Yeah. It's good she's there – I reckon this '_The_ Apocalypse' that's going to give you a heartbeat again is a real bad one."

"They're all bad."

"Yeah, but this is _you_, mate. The universe has it in for you, or hadn't you noticed?"

"Yeah, but I was trying to ignore it."

"Denial is not a river in Egypt, love."

"Tell me about it."

"Angel – "

Both turned as Wesley came in with a folder. Both vampires knew that underneath his shirt his skin was a glorious rainbow of bruising. The ex-Watcher came over to stand at the window, both vampires moving aside so he was between them and for a moment they contemplated the scene. "Giles called this morning. The connections are working perfectly and the protective wards Willow set are operating at maximum output."

"Good. We're going to need them." Angel said grimly. "We've everyone after us, including the so called good guys, and if Lindsey MacDonald was right we're _in _the middle of _the _Apocalypse. Merging our resources has got to work…right?"

"Yes." Wesley said it with a flat, inflectionless, absolute certainty that made both vampires blink, whispering something so low that no human would have heard it.

"_Beruth-ak-Sirse_?" Spike repeated, frowning.

"Um? Nothing," Wesley raised the file. "Two teenage girls were snatched in East LA last night, the first about an hour after Buffy and the others set off back to Sunnydale, the second about two hours after that. Forensics from the crime scenes indicate both were snatched by the same acolytes and are to be killed in ritual sacrifice to Gigatt tomorrow."

"Gigatt being – "

"Twenty feet high, smells like an open sewer, breathes fire and secrets a gallon of viscous - "

"- slime." finished Angel with doleful certainty. "Always with the slime."

"Welcome to another day in LA." Spike rhymed cheerfully.

* * *

In her bedroom on the top floor of the mansion, Buffy did not sleep though the clock read 12:45am. She could hear the snuffling and shifting and whispering of her charges as they pretended to sleep. If they didn't quiet down soon Drill Sergeant Faith would be on the rounds, distinctly unimpressed at having to leave the side of nice, warm Robin Wood to quiet down the other members of the sisterhood. The blond slayer grinned – her they followed around like adoring puppies, Faith reduced them to quivering jelly.

Buffy's smile faded. She could understand the big restless this place invoked, after all if Slayers weren't 'sensitive to atmosphere', who was? Apart from UC Sunnydale and the local airport, this huge, rambling old mansion with uncountable rooms had been the only thing to survive the destruction of the First Evil, so Buffy had made the rational decision and had co-opted it, despite the bad memories. This was where Angelus, Spike and Drusilla had lived when he lost his soul after consummating his relationship with Buffy. That courtyard with the pretty fountain Xander had restored to working order was where she had run a sword through her beloved's belly and watched him get sucked into a Hell dimension _knowing_ he had a soul. That anteroom on the south side was where she had chained the animalistic Angel after he returned from hell more beast than man. In that small room on the second floor, Angelus had tortured Giles for hours.

She blinked back tears. Two vampires with souls, _because of her_. She loved Angel for his strength, his honour, his striving for redemption. She loved Spike for his wry humour, his unswerving loyalty and his unashamed openness in loving her. _And I can't have either_.

There was probably a huge cosmic joke at the back of this somewhere, but Buffy couldn't find it funny. Willow and the Slayer Kennedy were working out okay, though Tara Maclay's memory would always be there. Giles 'orgasm friend' Olivia turned out to be related to a Watcher family and had turned up to help the cause, though again, Jenny Calendar's faded ghost could sometimes be glimpsed in Giles' eyes.

Remembering Anya's forthright descriptions and opinions, Buffy felt a pang. She had never really been that close to the ex-demoness, but now had a new perspective, especially since Xander had become even more reserved since Anya's death; that wry whimsy he used to deflect the world's attention was now in place more frequently than ever. Those two had genuinely loved each other, which was indirectly what led to Anya being killed.

Anya had fought for Xander, just as Buffy fought for Dawn, and Kennedy fought for Willow, and Faith fought for Robin…

Faith, her dark sister; the matter of the Dark Slayer breaking out of prison had mysteriously gone away; Willow assured them it wouldn't be a problem, and it seemed as if Riley Finn's Government friends were also smoothing the path. With Robin Wood she was finding a peace she'd been unable to find anywhere else. Perhaps it was the fact that Robin was the only known child born to a Slayer, maybe that gave him some insight, but whatever it was, Buffy found she was grateful to him; Faith had done things, evil things, but it was easy to be righteous when you grew up in a home with parents who loved you.

_I find myself needing to know the plural of Apocalypse_. Riley's words echoed in her mind. Being the one who stopped Apocalypses – or should that be Apocalypsii? - was scary, but suddenly it didn't bear down on Buffy's soul as much as it usually did. _I'm not alone, but sometimes I get so wrapped up in what Charles Gunn calls 'the mission' that I forget I've never __**been**__ alone…Go, Scoobies…and Team Angel._

* * *

Angel popped his neck to work out the crick and stood up; it was 12:45am and everyone had long gone to better places. He grinned; since Wesley and Fred-Illyria had moved into Wes's apartment together, the ever-present scent and residue of male musk on the ex-Watcher's body showed that he wasn't getting much sleep. Not that Wesley seemed to mind, his step was full of _bounce_, never mind mere _spring_. Spike, with shadows of Drusilla clouding his eyes, had tentatively broached the subject of when _Illyria_ mated with Wesley as opposed to Fred, but Wesley had quietly assured them that the demon was remarkably cautious of it's superior strength and hurting Wesley; it had given Angel food for thought – that _Drusilla_ had raped, tortured and sexually abused _Spike_ for her sensual pleasure, rather than the other way around, had never really occurred to him, because he and Darla had never had that kind of relationship, besides which the fact that the blonde woman was his Sire had always engendered in Angelus the faint vestiges of the only 'respect' he had ever felt for anything.

To both vampires' inward pleasure, since neither was looking forward to going back to pig's blood (and they _still_ hadn't winkled out the weasel doping Angel's 'daily flask' with Luaric), Wesley had no problems allowing either to feed, as long as Illyria was kept in the dark as long as possible. Angel winced as he pulled on his jacket – he and Spike had the problem! The testosterone-oestrogen mix that mingled with Wesley's natural sandalwood and lemon scent combined in turn with his pleasure-endorphin-and-adrenaline saturated blood to produce a potent, sweet nectar that was both intoxicating and almost like an aphrodisiac to both vampires. Angel had been hugely embarrassed when he was feeding and realised to his horror that he was becoming aroused by the heady combination of Wesley's hormone-marinated scent and the taste of his blood. When the ex-Watcher was safely out of earshot, Spike had admitted his own difficulties in the area.

Spike…Angel knew his grandson would be delighted to have the hotel all to himself again, sprawled in his personal palace with no interlopers…or as alone as Spike could be surrounded by the ghosts of dozens of suicide/murder victims. Right now Spike would be watching the last of _Passions_…how anyone with the ability to love _Keats_ could like that garbage was beyond Angel.

Angel's smile faded; the Apocalypse was Coming with a capital 'C' or maybe even here with a capital 'H' – he could feel it in his bones; what had Spike said…? 'Apocalypse Express'…

He frowned; he had viewed Spike as a threat, not a fellow Champion of Light. Spike's habit of allowing his actions to be led by what he_ felt_ rather than _thinking_ things through created the false impression that he wasn't that bright. Angel knew he above of all should have known better: his grandson was impulsive – but acutely perceptive, sometimes terrifyingly so. _"'Love isn't brains, children, it's blood…screaming inside you to work it's will'" …_the words Spike spat at him and Buffy in the Magic Box so long ago had shattered the comfortable deception maintained between Angel and Buffy, forcing the older vampire to the realisation he had to leave Sunnydale before Buffy herself had come to tell him that it had to be over: _"' I can fool everyone, but I can't fool myself…or Spike, for some reason…'"_

Spike's greatest advantage was that people tended to underestimate him, just as Angel had. Spike had sacrificed the chance to be restored to solid form to save Fred from Matthias Pavayne with no guarantee of ever managing it in the future; he had known instantly and _instinctively_ - ahead of Angel _and_ Wesley- just how to kill Number Five's Aztec demon; he had risked his life to free Fred from Illyria; he had been a revelation in his determination to protect Dawn Summers.

_And he doesn't __**really**__ expect to be the fulfilment of the Shanshu Prophecy, for all that he goes on about it. Spike believes that I will get to be real boy again…and that he will end up subcontracting to Wolfram & Hart for eternity, but he fights by my side anyway. Way to go, Angel, kick your fellow Champion while he's down…_

Shaking off his morose thoughts, Angel walked around his desk, then paused as a memory resurfaced…on a whim, he detoured past Wesley's office and went inside, grinning at the scholarly display – books and scrolls everywhere. On Wesley's desk were the Source Books, templates that tied into each discipline in the Wolfram & Hart archives, so it was unnecessary to physically fetch a particular work from the vaults. His excellent eyesight picked out the spines in the darkness and he extracted the source book that was a sort of dictionary-stroke-thesaurus-polyglot. It offered explanations of words and phrases. Raising it to his lips, he said, his excellent memory recalling the inflections: "_Beruth-ak-Sirse, _in English_."_

Opening the book, he found a single page. The first heading referred to the mating rituals of a subterranean Pythias demon sub-group, with pictures. Gross, and it didn't really fit. The second was the chorus of some ancient Old Norse victory song about decapitated enemies, buckets of entrails, vats of blood and so forth. Not likely…

Hang about…_The Merging of the Circles: Refers to the point in time when the Two Circles of Nine symbolically merge as one united group in the prelude to the Apocalypse of Nahzruthim-Ensuallu. See: Shanshu Oracle and the Scroll of Niamh._

"Naz-ruth-im-en-swah-loo." Angel tried, and looked again, a chill running through him when he saw the words form: _Nahzruthim-ensuallu – the vampires-ensoulled, beloved of the Slayer-Queen, Mother of All Slayers_. _See Scroll of Niamh. _Every prophecy Angel had ever seen spoke only of _the_ Vampire with the Soul, and none, including the Shanshu, mentioned any Mother of All Slayers!

_Wait_…"Buffy turned all the Potentials into actual Slayers." Angel thought aloud. "The mother of all slayers...they're princesses but Buffy's the Queen." Closing the book he replaced it, and picked up the Prophecy template source book: "The Scroll of Niamh, English translation."

Opening the book, he frowned. The pages were blank and remained so even after several seconds. "The Scroll of Niamh, English…" His words trailed off as words appeared on the page:

The Scroll of Niamh is not within the Wolfram & Hart archives, and cannot be located within any extra-dimensional archives at this time. It is therefore unavailable for reading, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

"Whoa."

* * *

The kitchen clock ticked remorselessly to 12:50am. Wesley didn't notice as he sat at the table, nude, poring over a familiar scroll. In the bedroom above, Fred slept on obliviously and deeply, sated from their intense, prolonged love-making.

Carefully, Wesley's fingers traced a section of the Scroll of Niamh. The Two Circles of Nine would come together in preparation for the great battle, working united to face the coming apocalypse. Tomorrow he would go to _Ye Olde Britannia _on his way home from work, and the weasel-faced man could work his magic on the blood-stained handkerchief that Wesley would give him…

© 2008, C. D. Stewart

The 6th of the 8 stories in "The Blood Will Tell" Series is _Shadowed Souls_…coming soon.


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